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This course will explore the illuminated world of William Blake poet, prophet, revolutionary, and visionary artist in the context of intellectual history, culture, and aesthetics. To study Blake is to witness the birth pangs of modernity and the pathos energy and agony of alternate, impossible histories that fell by the wayside. The task is multidisciplinary, and it is one that opens literary history into our contemporary moment. Blake challenges virtually every aspect of literary representation, from character to narrative structure, from poetic meter to typology and other features of print culture. He is historical in his situatedness (religious dissent, the chemical revolution, industrialization, commodification, and controversies about human and animal rights were all part of his milieu) but he is also radically present in his ongoing influence and relevance. The course will unpack Blake's iconography, ideology, mythology, and infernal method which made every illuminated book a unique work of art.